National Action Plan on Open Government Commitment

Developing a roadmap for identifying and prioritizing federal data standards required significant infrastructural, operational and policy modifications to be undertaken prior to advancement in this priority area.
1. ADM SEP identified a need for data standards. In 2021, the Assistant Deputy Minister Committee for Service and Enterprise Planning (ADM SEP) established a working group to identify how best to manage and govern data at an “enterprise” (GC-wide) scale. This working group produced a final report in January of 2022, which identified several use cases for enterprise-wide data, and made several recommendations for the governance of data on an enterprise-wide scale, including the establishment of the Assistant Deputy Minister Committee for Data and Information (ADM CDI).
2. The Information and Data Governance team at TBS had to be reconstituted in 2022, after having been disbanded in 2017 in anticipation of the creation of the Policy on Service and Digital, which combined IM functions with digital service delivery.
3. The GC CDO role and ADM CDI, to support the GC CIO's authorities related to information and data governance, were created in 2022. This included the ability to rapidly endorse and prescribe enterprise (i.e., GC-wide) data and metadata standards.
4. The existing governance processes and relevant communities and committees needed to be brought under a single roof so their efforts across the GC would be funnelled through the ADM CDI. This involved also aligning Terms of Reference for these groups to clarify reporting relationships, objectives and authorities. This occurred in mid-2023.
5. A streamlined governance process had to be developed between 2022 and 2023 to support the endorsement and prescription of data standards. In effect, this created an entirely new, "policy-lite" instrument that better conformed to the rapid pace of change in the digital ecosystem. That instrument is called the "Data Reference Standard." This work was done in collaboration with TBS Priorities and Planning, who ensure the integrity of the entire policy suite of TBS. This new instrument reduces approval time from 12-24 months, minimum, to under 3 months.
6. Effective standards governance also required the preliminary identification of domains of data leadership across the GC, as well as an approach to stewardship that would maintain data standards over their entire lifecycle.
7. Finally, over the course of the fall, 2023, several data reference standards were endorsed and prescribed by the GC CIO, using the new governance and policy process. This approach allowed the TBS IDG team to work with stakeholders and continue to identify and resolve challenges before embarking on more ambitious work planning.

Having accomplished those significant structural achievements, the past three months have resulted in the development of both a prioritization methodology and a list of priority standards to prescribe. The methodology accounts for domain capacities, change drivers, and the degree of effort required to prescribe the standard (i.e., can it be adopted, adapted or must it be authored?).

This roadmap, however, is not a static tool. It is constantly evolving as priorities, pressures and needs change - both inside and outside government. New barriers to adoption or implementation are frequently encountered, which affects deliverable dates. Prioritization, consequently, focuses heavily on the date when a standard begins development, rather than target completion dates.

Identification of potential standards for federal adoption continued, including preliminary work to determine a prioritization approach.

An internal tracker has been developed as a tool to help the established governance bodies identify and prioritize data reference standards, for which they share the responsibility of endorsement.

Identification of potential standards for federal adoption continued, including preliminary work to determine a prioritization approach.

Work is at early stages and not publicly available.

Preliminary work to gather input on potential standards for federal adoption continued.

Work is at early stages and not publicly available.

Preliminary work to gather input on potential standards for federal adoption was initiated.

Work is at early stages and not publicly available.